On the other hand, there are certain cases where a person is aware of his act and does it, and yet he is not morally condemned. Here there is consciousness but no moral judgment. But then there is also no volition. Just as when our heart is set upon doing something, anxiety to, succeed may make us do the opposite, so conversely we may do the thing which we hate in a fit of what is really insanity. Some acts done in popular panics might come under this description. They would be condemned only if the person is responsible for his condition; but otherwise he may plead force majeure: he did not will the act, because the act was not produced by the idea. before his mind, but by the intruding passion.1

11. (3.) I may pass on to instances of habitual action which are certainly morally judged, but have the appearance of being unconscious. The force of association may make certain habits really mechanical. Supposing I have been long in the habit of taking by right of precedence a particular chair in a room, when I enter the room after a time, though I may no longer possess the right, I may still walk to the chair and be guilty of a 'discourtesy.' Such discourtesy would be excused as involuntary. Now it might be held that many of our routine actions are of this character; for instance, the action of dressing when I rise in the morning, though certainly a duty, seems no more volitional than the act of a cat which cleans her face when she wakes. And very often the process goes on as we say unconsciously. Byron says he composed Lara while. dressing. But in the first place it is not necessary that we should consciously exert our will through every step of a long process: it is sufficient to will the beginning. And again, so far as I can trust my own experience, there is always the idea of something to be done before my

1 In the above I have derived help from Bradley's Ethical Studies, PP. 41, 42; and Mind, xiii. p. 31.

2 Unless of course the person ought to have foreseen such a case and guarded against the habit.

c

mind, e.g., the act of going to the water, which is distinct. from my present feeling. There is therefore volition, but the passage of the idea into reality is so rapid as to be really immediate.

The same is true of all moral habits. They are habits of will, though from their sureness and uniformity they resemble instincts. It is only the illusory mysteriousness and arbitrariness which we associate with the will which incline us to the belief that such habits are not volition. If they were really instincts, if at the mere perception of distress I mechanically put my hand into my pocket to bestow money, I should be regarded not as a moral agent but as a mere automaton. Though it is the object of education to create habits of action, it is more important still that these habits should not become instincts, and should not lose their freedom and self-control. Such mechanical habits are more likely to lead to evil than to good, and if they were real instincts, then the good results to which they might lead would be only accidentally good. We should set them down to the person's credit not on their own account, but as before on account of the acts which led him to such a state of mind.

12. (4) Lastly, acts of simple omission require to be mentioned here. It might seem as if such an act was culpable not because it willed the bad, but only because it did not will the good-not a volition but the absence of a volition. But the phrase ' an act of omission' is a mere negative description, and represents a mode under which we think of the case for a particular purpose. A negative proposition is merely subjective, and depends upon something positive in the thing described. Similarly an act of omission is bad not because the person did not do something, but because he did something else, or was in such a state that he did not do what was required. In the former case his act was willed; in the latter case either he deliberately remained inactive and therefore willed, or was in such a condition that he could not will, and

is condemned for the acts which brought him into that condition.

Thus whenever moral judgment is passed it is passed upon will, as will has been here defined, or else on the ground of acts of will (and it may be noticed that the reservation applies only to cases where censure is passed, and not approbation). The converse proposition that all volition is morally judged cannot be established till we have learnt more of the nature of willed conduct, which it will be the object of the next chapter to explain.

CHAPTER II.

CONDUCT AND CHARACTER.

I.-EXTERNAL ACTION.

I. MORALITY which has been thus exhibited as right volition is described also as right action or right conduct. The name conduct is usually employed with a covert reference to the outcome of will in external action, and we have to ask the relation of mere outward action to conduct. But, besides this, conduct has an inner source in feeling and an outward result in its consequences, and its precise connection with these is of essential importance for ethics. It will be shown that the real moral fact is conduct itself regarded as a whole of many elements, and that actions, consequences, and internal feelings have value for morality only in so far as they are elements of this fact.

2. External action (to begin with this) concerns conduct only in so far as the object of certain volitions is derived from this source. In general the object of volition is, as with desire, some state of my mind, which being ideal at first, is realised by the volition itself. How much of the means to the end is included in the statement of the object is mainly an arbitrary matter of language, but strictly the object of any volition is the end or ultimate result itself. This object is some state of my mind which directly or indirectly is regarded as one which can be brought about. Here it differs from the object of desire, which may be for a simple feeling like warmth without any idea of its production. Hence when the object of

will is described as some passive state, as when I determine to be in London, it always implies some action of which that state is the result; and where no such implication is conveyed (as if I were to say I will warmth), the state cannot with propriety be called the object of the will. It may be added that the character or content of the will is the character or content of its object.

Now the will may derive its object from any source: it is not confined to external action, but can, as we have seen, take its object from any of the lower mental states, from emotions, from thoughts, from desires. In all these cases the object of the will is not the emotion or thought itself, but some idea connected with it, as, e.g., its suppression. We may even derive the object from volition itself, willing to produce the conditions which evoke volition, as when we speak with the pessimist of suppressing the will to live, or determine that we will make up our minds. This does not of course mean that the will can will itself; we do not will our will any more than we desire our desire, or feel our feeling. We should in that case be making the process of willing its own object, or in so far as we do not commit that error, we simply assert the tautology that the will is a will and not something else.

3. The will may thus remain entirely internal, and be no less conduct. Conversely, when the will issues in external action it is no less an internal event. External conduct differs from other conduct only in the source from which the object is taken. The mere external motion stands to the whole object of the will in the same relation as a thought does when I will to evoke it. In willing an external action, the object is the state of mind which we call by the name of the action, and is the psychical side of a certain set of bodily motions. When I will to go to London my object is the state of mind I am in when going to London. When the object is called the idea of the motion, this is a shorthand expression for the object as described. The mere physical movement of the body is